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Tony’s Last Tape

Omnibus Theatre

Reviewed – 4th April 2019

★★★★

“through this richly observed production it’s poignant to realise the heady positions of influence reached by Benn”

It was occasionally said of Tony Benn that he could make something you passionately disagree with sound perfectly reasonable. The charm with which he expresses his controversial convictions has been fulsomely archived in thousands of hours of recordings, nine volumes of diaries not to mention his own one man shows. So, Andy Barrett’s one man play Tony’s Last Tape imagining how the last of Benn’s home recording sessions might have proceeded, sits in a curious space, fictionalising the well-documented. Commissioned by the Nottingham Playhouse in 2015, a year after Benn’s death, it is likely to have originated as a homage and Rachael Jacks’ detailed set design sustains the theory. A loving reconstruction of Benn’s study, featuring a desk covered in papers, pipes and an array of recording devices is surrounded by boxes, cabinets and bookshelves laden with memoirs and projects, all awash with nostalgic blue-yellow light (Martin Curtis).

The portrayal of the doddery 88-year-old himself, in slippers, dressing gown and Poll Tax demo tee-shirt, is affectionate and masterfully delivered. Philip Bretherton manages to capture Benn’s contorted splay of elbows and thumbs as he starts his pipe, the finger-wagging and chin-jutting, to perfection. The script just as skilfully renders Benn’s vocal style, a combination of moral certainty and loquacity. For those unlikely to find time to listen to hours of original ‘Benn tapes’ the play provides a handy biography. Running at seventy five minutes it fits in details of Benn’s private life, the loss of his brother in wartime and his wife to cancer amongst a comprehensive range of his greatest hits, career achievements, memories and meetings by means of an apparently rambling but supremely well-constructed narrative.

Giles Croft’s direction simplifies and amplifies his subject, sometimes reducing him to a sardonic figure, other times hectoring. While it’s possible to suggest that Benn may have ended up privately disillusioned in this way, the script itself doesn’t. Nevertheless, it’s an absorbing show; by accident or design, these performances coincide with daily vilifications of Benn’s modern-day counterpart, Jeremy Corbyn, which add topical resonance to the audience experience. The parallels are unavoidable in their principled dislike of the EU and as well as their subversive style. Indeed, Corbyn was involved in the incident cited in the play where the pair ‘vandalised’ the Houses of Parliament chapel with a plaque commemorating suffragette Emily Wilding Davison.

It remains to be seen whether Corbyn ends up like Benn, a National Treasure, but through this richly observed production it’s poignant to realise the heady positions of influence reached by Benn, despite being reviled.

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Photography by Robert Day

Tony’s Last Tape

Omnibus Theatre until 20th April

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

The North! The North! | ★★★ | March 2018

Gauhar Jaan – The Datia Incident | ★★★★ | April 2018

The Yellow Wallpaper | ★★★★ | June 2018

Blood Wedding | ★★★ | September 2018

Quietly | ★★★ | October 2018

To Have to Shoot Irishmen | ★★★★ | October 2018

The Selfish Giant | ★★★★ | December 2018

Hearing Things | ★★★★ | January 2019

The Orchestra | ★★★ | January 2019

Lipstick: A Fairy Tale Of Iran | ★★★ | February 2019

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★★½

“In spite of the dogged efforts of the cast, the audience just didn’t get many of the jokes”

Billed as ‘an instant modern classic like ‘The Play that Goes Wrong’’, Jack Milner and Mark Stevenson’s ‘Octopus Soup!’ is a new British farce, developed and premiered by the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, before a national tour which continues to May 4.

Where would theatre be without farce? At its best and in the hands of masters like Ayckbourn or Feydeau its ingredients are brilliant wit, sexual intrigue, and a lot of ‘business’ as comedic stereotypes get utterly confounded by impossible situations. But is the recipe right for this particular bouillabaisse?

‘Octopus Soup!’ has an accomplished and hard-working cast, admirably led by Nick Hancock, who helped to create and then presented ‘Room 101’ for seven years from its inception in 1992. He plays the risk-averse but increasingly desperate insurance man Seymour Norse who is about to make the biggest presentation of his life to the CEO of GIT, a troubled insurance company (an authoritative and satisfying performance by Gillian Bevan, who recently appeared as Theresa May in Channel 4’s ‘The Windsors’).

Before a word of dialogue is spoken, Seymour Norse has lost his trousers. A predictable enough part of the mix, but pretty wasted at the top of the show. The arrival of a blundering burglar (a smart performance by Paul Bradley) stirs up the plot, which then takes a few fishy twists before a fairly predictable ending. Norse’s nervy wife is wittily played by Carolyn Backhouse, a regular at the Chichester Festival Theatre. Eric Richard makes a satisfying appearance as a nasty underworld boss with a taste for seal sanctuaries. Terry the octopus twitches, a bullet is fired. Thanks to a well-known casserole company, which got the biggest laugh of the evening, someone is dead, or are they? So much for the slide presentation and for the plot, which stretches pretty thinly over the evening.

Actors often say that a play that seems lack-lustre one night will shine the next, simply because of the mood of one audience compared to another. I have to report that the audience in Windsor on Monday weren’t hungry for octopus soup. The fault seemed to lie not with the performances, or the set, or even the slightly dodgy sound effects, but with the writing. Many of the jokes relied on fairly improbable malapropisms of the ‘Ethics? – I come from there!’ kind. In spite of the dogged efforts of the cast, the audience just didn’t get many of the jokes, particularly in the limping first act.

The final line sank like a damp soufflé, and the cast seemed only too quick to leave the stage.

Reviewed by David Woodward

Photography by Robert Day

Omnibus Theatre

Reviewed – 4th April 2019

★★★★

“through this richly observed production it’s poignant to realise the heady positions of influence reached by Benn”

It remains to be seen whether Corbyn ends up like Benn, a National Treasure, but through this richly observed production it’s poignant to realise the heady positions of influence reached by Benn, despite being reviled.

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Photography by Robert Day

Tony’s Last Tape

Omnibus Theatre until 20th April

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Theatre Royal Windsor

Reviewed – 1st April 2019

★★½

“In spite of the dogged efforts of the cast, the audience just didn’t get many of the jokes”

Billed as ‘an instant modern classic like ‘The Play that Goes Wrong’’, Jack Milner and Mark Stevenson’s ‘Octopus Soup!’ is a new British farce, developed and premiered by the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, before a national tour which continues to May 4.

The final line sank like a damp soufflé, and the cast seemed only too quick to leave the stage.

Reviewed by David Woodward

Photography by Robert Day

Octopus Soup!

Theatre Royal Windsor until 6th April then UK Tour continues

Previous shows covered by this reviewer: